ENGL 53.01 The Black Arts Movement
This course explores the literature, art, and criticism of the Black Arts Movement. The artistic corollary to the Black Power movement, the Black Arts Movement flourished in the 1960s and 1970s as artists/activists sought to put a revolutionary cultural politics into practice around the country. The Black Arts Movement had far-reaching implications for the way artists and writers think about race, history, authorship, and the relationship between artistic production and political liberation. We'll explore these issues in work by Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Larry Neal, and others who forged the traditionally-defined Black Arts Movement in Harlem. We'll also trace the movement's flowering around country, where local political struggles and artistic traditions in Chicago, Newark, Los Angeles, and Detroit shaped distinctive regional variations of the Black Arts Movement. We'll consider how the literature of the Black Arts Movement intersected with other cultural currents of the time, its critics, and the persistence of its themes in contemporary culture.
Cross Listed Courses
AAAS 81.01